The Social Question

Schmidt Number: S-3657

On-line since: 15th November, 2017

Lecture 4
by Rudolf Steiner
given at Zurich, 12 February 1919

“The Evolution of Social Thinking and Willing and Life's
Circumstances for Current Humanity.”

Perhaps the lectures which I have been able to give here during
this week and last week, proves from a certain point of view
that it is justified to say that the situation of current
humanity is deeply influenced by the developments which social
thinking and social will have been adapting in the course of
more recent times up to the present. More perhaps than most
people suspect, the social impulse will penetrate directly into
the life of single people — this penetration will happen
more and more. It will become the determining factor towards
the powers of the most individual behaviour. People are hardly
able to understand their position within the human community
which heaves and pulses with social impulses under examination,
how its origins actually developed out of two different human
shifts in the course of recent times — into social
thinking and social willing. As a result, the continuation of
these origins works into the present, works in such a way that it
actually gives a social form to our current life.

I
have mentioned in my lectures that solutions are not to be
found towards understanding such things by doing what one
usually does, by taking history as a straight line and
regarding it as cause and effect in order to always reach a
conclusion by what had gone just before. I have tried to draw
attention to this: the historical life of humanity in its
essence or foundations in relation to certain crises in the
course of events, or rather better said: of the presence of
crises during the course of events — are similar to what
happens in the life of individual people. In the life of
individual human beings there is no straight line of
development; results arrive without a leap out of what went
before. It is necessary to take the comfortable but often
misunderstood conception that nature makes no leaps in a
corresponding way by observing time and again how in the course
of an individual life, crises appear, like the crisis in the
sixth or seventh year of life with the change of teeth, how
these crises arrive out of elementary organic foundations, just
as it similarly rises to puberty. Whoever has knowledge of the
course of human life can show how such critical changes also
appear later in life even if they are not taken in as decisive
a way by superficial observation as the first two. To observe
such critical changes in the course of life is necessary in
order to really understand the history of life. As much as
current humanity is averse to such observation and listening,
just as necessary is it right now to promote the social
understanding of life and to point out such things with radical
intensity. One of the last big changes — this I explored
in the previous lectures — in the course of evolution of
mankind we can point out as having taken place at the turn of
the 15th, 16th Centuries. Only if one
does not enter deeply enough into the historical course of
things will one not know how radically different everything is
which happens in the human soul as demands, as desires
demanding certain satisfaction; how that changes in relation to
what had arrived before that moment.

Now
at the same time, as if followed by this elementary change in
the later times of man's evolution, something appears which can
be expressed as follows: the social impulse lived within the
human soul in earlier times; this social impulse led to the
structure of the social impulse. In earlier times, this social
impulse was experienced instinctively. People lived together
socially, ordered their affairs socially within their
community. At that time, in the place of instinctive thinking
and willing, a change started to take place towards a more
conscious social impulse. This conscious impulse came to the
fore gradually and slowly but it distinguished itself by
shifting modern humanity radically away from the situation of
medieval and ancient humanity. Here we see immediately how with
the taking up of the social impulse out of the instinctive and
into the conscious life, clearly two streams are created,
indicating two diverging movements of social thinking and
willing.

The
one stream is clear in those people who can still up to today
be called the foremost, leading social class of humanity. The
other stream appeared somewhat later but is clearly
distinguishable from the former, which we today describe as the
Proletarian world. The leading intellectual bourgeois circles
with all their interests as modern time came along, are linked
to all that was created as the newer state which had gradually
developed out of the structures of medieval community life.
These bourgeois leading circles are through their interests
linked to what we have placed under the three members I have
explored as the social organism, describable as the actual
constitutional state, as actually politically constituted,
whether instinctive or consciously based regarding the
relationships of one person to another. As with ancient
traditions and also with a certain reference to newer
scientific relationships, the leading bourgeois circles linked
their interests more or less to what many people held as the
only social form, namely the state. As a result of them moving
consciously from the old instinctive social life to the modern
consciousness, they thought as a result of anything related to
the state were to be in terms of the constitutional state. As
modern economic life became ever more complicated which through
the expansion of the human horizon of activities became ever
more complicated right over the world, so the leading circles
tried to establish it in the structure of the state. They
wanted to make the state ever more into the economist. This
endeavour took on a certain course and we see that within
certain circles single economic sectors were gradually drawn
into the state structure. I pointed out such economic sectors
last time. The essential aspect from this view is that social
thinking earned quite a particular form as a result, in these
circles, because of it wanting to conquer the state's
interests: the encroaching complicated economic life.

The
social impulse developed in quite a different way in the
Proletarians. Now with the awakening in newer times the modern
Proletarians didn't involve themselves as much within the real
state territory. Due to a lack of time I can't enter into this
further through deeper examination — but in their
relationship, they stood quite removed from the interests of the
leading circles and their representation in the state's
structure. Still, the Proletarians were driven into the
structure of the economic life in the most radical way. Their
entire thinking and feeling unfolded in such a way that it was
like a mirror image of what was being experienced in the
economic life. Thus, the social impulse of the Proletarians
became determined by the social structure of the economy of
humanity, the economic life, just like the social impulse of
the leading bourgeois and intellectual circles became
determined by impulses of the constitutional state, by the
impulses of the actual political structures. With both streams,
they developed more and more in such a way that even these days
there appears what I referred to in my lecture the day before
yesterday, a gap, an abyss between the specific configuration
of social thinking and feeling of leading bourgeois and
Proletarian circles. I consider this to be the most tragic
arrangement of mankind's situation in present times, the
existence of this abyss which makes it so difficult for an
understanding, to find a mutual understanding between both the
two mentioned social classes. So it must come about as we will
see: how prepared both the classes are in their struggle for
existence in confrontation. The essential fact in this fight,
which has partly already happened, is partly still being
prepared, and that which can make sense, even still today only
grasp community life superficially, will take on gigantic forms
which are essential in order for, on the one side the bourgeois
leading circles want the economy to become gradually captured
by the state, co-capturing the state economy in such an
extraordinary way which is the productivity and labour of the
Proletarians themselves, and on the other side that the
Proletarians want to conquer from the state the element where
their interests are experienced in an isolated economic
life.

That is the essential basic principle of this struggle which
plays with so much meaning into the current situation of
humanity. Over and beyond all that, as is often the case in
awareness, it has been forgotten to pay attention calmly
— I would like to call it, to what has been pushed down
into the subconscious which lies behind the two impulses I've
mentioned — to what is actually hidden. What wants to
work on the surface of human lives since the critical change in
the 15th Century entered later mankind, while what
sweeps and drifts and pulsates in human life frequently only
takes place in disguise in the consciousness: this striving
towards an affirmation of the human personality appears which
had not been known in earlier times. Assertion of the human
personality, experiencing human nature within, actually makes
up the nerve of the social question and dresses itself only
according to the various relationships already determined by
the given forms. So it could happen that this struggle towards
the achievement of the complete assertion of all individuals,
can become a struggle for all people — a struggle having
become one of differing mutual interests, a struggle of the
classes, a struggle which throws its forces in a disastrous way
into the present.

Because this indicates something hidden and masked in the newer
development of humanity it has resulted in focus not being
directed, or better said, that people up to now have not learnt
to direct their focus on what matters. During the time when the
social impulse worked instinctively, people could allow the
social organism to form itself instinctively. Because the
social impulse has entered consciousness, even if in masked
form, it is necessary right there, necessary as the most
important thing in relation to the social problem of the more
newer times, that social understanding, an understanding for
the expression of the social organism in each individual
enters, but that this understanding brings no learned aspect
with it but brings an experience which lives in feelings and
expresses itself in individuals as this or that necessity to
situate themselves in the human community. For this reason, it
is so necessary to do what I'm trying to accomplish in these
lectures: to turn our focus on to the totality of striving in
newer humanity which can only now penetrate the surface in a
particular relationship, to focus on really making the social
organism into a living form, a form which will allow humanity
in their current situation to understand it in a lively way,
not just in theory. For this reason, I point out that the health
of the social organism depends on not making a chaotic jumble
but that the three members are as follows: spiritual life in
the widest sense, legal- or political life which means state
life in a narrower sense and lastly, the economic life. Only in
this way can those within the three members experience their
necessary liberation, so that one of the three forms are not
engulfed by one of the others but that they unfold freely
beside one another and already in a certain independence as I
have depicted from different viewpoints, now work together side
by side. Up to now certain preconditions directed actual
tendencies of human evolution against this independence. By
differentiating what had been interwoven previously has now
become the most needed current question in relation to the
social nature of current humanity.

By
exploring certain sides of human thinking, you can feel what I
mean, that even in the light of consciousness the social
impulse starts according to spiritual presuppositions
respectively and they think in this or that way about the
relationships between the life of the state and that of the
economy. So we see the so-called social or national economics
— whatever you want to call it, it is the same thing
— formed out of ways of thinking, habits of thinking. It
is not my purpose to present the social thinking of the newer
time. I only want to draw your attention to one thing —
actually I would like to shed light on several things which
must be addressed in these lectures. Among these various ways
of thinking, ways of presenting the interweaving of economic
with state- and spiritual life, there appears also in this
newer time what was designated in the 18th Century
as the so-called physiocratic national economic ideas. Earlier
thinking had the intention of organizing economic life out of
the state organism and this formed itself as by necessity in
opposition against the physiocratic thinking. It was developing
in such a way that there was a need to change economic life not
being tyrannized by the state in a narrow sense, that economic
life be responsible for its own natural laws, wanting it to be
left to what it would fall into if humanity freely, simply out
of his own interests guide the economic life. Experts had
various revealing things to say which can be somewhat echoed.
These people asked: What kind of system of laws should actually
go into this form of political state which will regulate
economic life? Either the laws are to be the same as those
which economic life gives when it is left to freely play with
the forces, or it will let others impose on it. If it is the
first case, when it is the same, then it is not necessary, the
others are not needed and economic life develops its own laws,
particularly state laws do not need involvement in economic
life. If, however, the state laws work against the economic life
then it restricts it, it impairs it and can do damage to
itself.

I
would like to say that what is expressed in these two opposing
statements still haunts many people's thoughts. It haunts them
because modern humanity, even though they consider themselves
very practical and have a sense for what is real, are still
terribly consumed by a certain sense for abstraction, for
theoretical one sidedness. Should one try to prove in how many
people today what appears as practical life is none other than
an actualized one-sidedness, realized one sided theory, then
one will touch on some riddles of life and be able to find
partial solutions. What sounds the most plausible, most
independent for me is to say: Either state laws take on the
same direction as the economic ones then they are not
necessary, or you contradict them and by so doing, damage the
economy. One thinks about these opposites only when one
considers the social organism as something which allows itself
to be regulated according to concepts, laws, principles and
programs, when one does not face up to the social organism
being something which has to have life, which must live through
its own being. Whatever has come through its own content of
life, through its own thriving and sprouting impulses of life,
has in real life an opposition to it. The social organism, in
order to be a reality, must have oppositions within itself.

For
this reason it is necessary to express something which probably
many theoretically orientated souls in current times will see
as absurd: the state-, pure legal-, and pure political-life needs
to be limited in a certain way, in its laws it needs to
counteract the economic life in order for the community life of
humanity not to be only an economic, not only a legal life
situation but an economic, legal and spiritual one, so that it
can unfold as we have seen in the example of the human
organism. I will once again use this example — I don't
want to play the game of analogy between physiology and
sociology — the processes of the digestive system is in a
certain way independent of those in the rhythmic system,
breathing and heart system, both are limited and mutually
restrained in their vital processes. So it is necessary that
the placing beside one another within the real social organism
is the economic life on the one side and in a narrower sense
the state life on the other side, which must be joined by the
relatively independent spiritual life, as I have illustrated
last time from another point of view.

From the following we see what it's really all about. Economic
life has quite different inner forces than the legal life,
which have to work together if the totality of life is to
prosper and this is different again with spiritual life. You
could, if you wanted to bring something more or less concretely
lively into abstract forms, even if from a one-sided view in
order to make it understandable, say the following: in economic
life, as in the production of goods, circulation and
consumerism, it all comes down to a corresponding creation of
value. This creation of value is accomplished essentially by
value building itself if the social organism is to be healthy,
under the influences and impulses, that the consumption for
which the economic organism takes responsibility — call
it market or something else — has it ready for
consumption so that the consumer of the goods benefits as far
as possible. Goods must be offered for consumption if the
social organism is healthy, in such a way that it is completely
used in an expedient way, that it lasts for as long as it is
useful, or for as quickly as it can be consumed while it is
useful, that in any case its entire content depends on
consumption.

If
human labour would be so totally engaged in economic life
— and this economic life can only develop in the healthy
way under the historical points of goods-price development
according to the corresponding consumption — so what the
Proletarians with Marxist viewpoints had hoped for, would be
fulfilled, human labour being considered as goods. In this way
human labour becomes tainted with the characteristics of goods
in the social organism, because it is being considered in its
ability to be fully utilised for its worth.

The
economic member of the social organism also has, when looked at
more closely, the tendency to use people and should the
economic member of the social organism only follow its own
rules, then human labour would be used up. Because the leading
bourgeois circles do not take this into account, they have
contributed to the situation that within economic life and the
position of the Proletariat in economic life, the very nerve of
the modern social question has developed, indicating that the
life of the modern Proletariat shows, particularly for himself,
he chose to undress his labour of the character of goods. As it
is sometimes masked in the social question and much of it
living unconsciously in the Proletariat, it is the important
element which the Proletarian soul strives for, the liberation
of human labour from the character of goods.

This can never happen if the economic processes follow their
own laws and when the totality of state life is only made into
a single economy as is the ideal of many modern socialists.
This can also not happen when in a one-sided way the state out
of itself is made into an economist. A healthy relationship can
only come about if the economic organism can be allowed to
unfold its relative processes by itself, when, as it happens in
natural organic life as well, a system is allowed to gradually
develop fully out of its own latent forces, is allowed to
unfold in relative independence. Whatever arises out of this
unfolding and is being limited, becomes changed by an adjacent
relatively independent system, just like it happens in a
natural organism having developed its system fully, which also
only expresses its harm as these losses are continuously being
paralyzed by the adjacent system. All organic processes are
based on this. On this the healing of the social organism must
also be based.

It
really doesn't matter to me how the economic organism is
defined, how one thinks about it. For me it matters that these
two branches need to be side by side and that they each develop
independently even with the predisposition of developing damage
within, so that the other system adjacent to it develops and
paralyzes that which arise as damage in the other system. That
is the nature of what is alive; that is also what the nature of
a living social organism need to be. Only when the economic
body manages itself on its own terms and the legal and
political bodies manage themselves, whether along their own
terms which result from the regulation or the legal
relationships between people; when these organisms regulate
themselves independently because they are working side by side
and on each other, then a healthy social life will be formed.
The social question will not be solved through theories, not
solved by laws but it will be solved through there being in
actual life the forces, one kind being the economic, beside the
others, the stately, the political, working directly in their
own existence, that they both work adjacent to one another and
develop in one another, but by developing in such a way that
each one maintains its independence.

This has been missed, out of a certain historical necessity.
What has happened has of course been necessary. No criticism
but a formulation of relationships is to be presented here.
This needs to be taken as essential today if human progress is
to orientate itself now and towards the future. It is a given
that for the sake of the recovery of the social organism,
economic life will become an associate, and becomes divided in
such a way that the cooperative societies, trade unions and so
on are formed by stripping off what had been inherited from the
prejudice of how a constitutional state should be formed. What
still existed in state life within these associations has to be
stripped off. They must become purely economic serving entities
which are based on the relationship of the human being in the
economic life, whether it is for the foundation of economic
life, or whether it is for the necessity of adding value to raw
materials, or to bring goods into circulation, the relationship
of consumerism in the right relation to production and trade
and so on. The complexity of human life makes it necessary
today for the entire system of associations and coalitions
which are created on the foundations of the economic life, to
be formed through human beings; such associations and
coalitions which essentially exist on the understanding of the
exploitation of the foundations and the directing of goods
towards appropriate consumption. Even the complexity demands
the creation of an entire system of associations in this
sphere. However, these associations would be designed out of the
connection of people with economic powers themselves. The
result could be something which again and again enters into
real life which is the tendency of the economic life to use
individuals.

Beside the economic life the political life must stand, which
in contrast to the economic life, is founded on associations
which must be based more on democracy because the state life
encompasses relationships between people. It encompasses
everything in which all people are equally interested in. As
the economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so
state life has to be based essentially on public law; based on
law or with law as its foundation, which determines the
relationships of one person to another. In a lively exchange in
the economic life a restriction and limitation would have to
take place. Approaches to this are available but a penetrating
social insight must take place. Whatever is to be created must
prioritise the protection of the human being from the economic
orientation of consumption, also in relation to his labour
being consumed.

Just as the creation of prices and values are the essentials
within the economic body, so the arrangement of actual laws, of
practical public laws regulating relations of one person to
another, are essential in life of the political state. Can it
not be said even today that in relation to the experience of
public law, no particular clarity has been reached? Many
questions can be raised to those who should know these things,
who should have done research about these things which are
actually to be understood under the essence of laws, laws which
always appear in practical form. One only comes to an
understanding of the difficulties when one looks for instance
at the example of such questions raised in the doctoral
dissertation of my friend who has passed away, Ludwig
Laistner in his “The Right to Punish,” This in
itself can become a question which considers the actual right
of the human community in relation to punishment.

One
can try all kinds of ways to come closer to the impulse of the
law. Particularly in our time when so much is being discussed
from the most various sides about the law, it is obvious that
to come ever closer, is to essentially search for the being of
Law. If you try and find what lies behind such real Law,
ownership is also based on law; the relationship of ownership
being a piece of land or anything exclusive to one person, for
his use with the exclusion of others — you find it is the
subject of the actual political member of the social body and
so you find nothing other than that it finally comes back to
power. Others discover it actually goes back to an original
human experience. One arrives far too easily at empty forms if
you try to tackle it. Without me getting entangled — and
this could involve hours of time — in a complete
substantiation, I would still like to say that the law bases a
certain relationship of people to something, to a thing, a
cause or something similar, or a collection of causes, with the
exclusion of other people. What is its basis then actually, if
one can develop the feeling that someone or other or a nation
has the right to something they lay their eyes on? Still, when
one takes the pains, you come to say nothing other than legal
rights are based on public life enabling an evolution for the
activity of something or its causes or collection of causes
which most probably do more for general humanity than any
other. The moment one has the experience that someone has a
relationship to something, or to someone else, where the need
to general humanity is obvious, one can apply the relevant law
for it. This will also be essential which will bring about the
decisive factor through human experience when the big legal
questions of international life now steps into the real world.
One would fully award rights over a certain territory, to those
who have the intention that in the sense of wellbeing of
general humanity this nation in particular will be the best at
making the territory the most productive.

So
one comes to the impulse which can weave and flow through the
democratic common wealth which must orientate the exchanges of
one person to another, be it in workers' insurance or be it in
other insurance, instituted to give protection against damaging
economic life; in all of this human life lies as the foundation
of law which I've just been speaking about. An understanding,
but not an understanding for some or other general abstract
definition of law, but an understanding for the effectiveness
of the law, in every single real case, needs to enter to make
it a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this
life of the political state in a narrower sense, of the second
member of a healthy social organism, that it will also be; the
real crossing point, I would say, of the modern social question
only, would not be through some realization of theories,
principles and programs, but through direct life, created in
the world, namely the point which I have referred to as the
demand of the modern Proletarians: disrobing the power of human
labour from being dressed up as goods.

To
that end it is necessary for people to also really understand,
I could say, understand out of the very foundation, what is
involved in the share of human labour in general life, in the
structure of the community. Again, it will involve hours to take
this into consideration if I would attempt establishing one
basic social law for human labour: intuitively and
instinctively, I believe, every person can do it if life is
penetrated fairly and comprehended regarding what I now want to
express.

In
my Newspaper called “Lucifer Gnosis” I tried to
point out this fundamental social law in my contribution about
the social question, which was published already at the
beginning of the century. However, people were sermonizing about
many things on this subject and even today, it falls to deaf
ears, unfortunately. This law implies that no one, in as far as
he or she belongs to the social body, the social organism,
actually works for himself or herself. Just think, insofar as a
person belongs to the social organism, he does not work for
himself. Each act of work which a person performs can never
fall back on him, also not in his actual yield, because it can
only be performed for others. What other people produce must be
good for us. It is not merely an ethical form of altruism which
lives in these things, but a simple social law. We can't do it
any other way, just as we can't redirect our blood, so the
circulation of the human manipulation will work in such a way
that our activity towards everyone and all the activities of
others are to our benefit; our own work never reverts back on
us.

However paradoxical it sounds, when you examine the real
circulatory process in human labour within the social organism
you will find the following: it originates in people and
benefits others. What one side receives out of the labour is
the result of the labour of the other side. As I said, as
paradoxical it might sound, it is true. One person can just as
little live from his own labour in the social organism as one
can eat oneself to get nourishment.

Even though basically this law is easy to understand, you could
argue: ‘When I am a tailor and among the clothes I make for
others, I also make myself a garment, then surely I'm directing
my labour back on to myself!’ — That is only an illusion
as it is always a deception to believe that the result of
labour falls back on oneself. By me making a skirt, pants or
equivalent, I don't in truth work for myself but put myself
into the position to work for others. This is the pure function
human labour has in a social law within the social organism.
Whoever dispels this law, works against the social organism.
One works against the social organism when one implements the
idea which has come about in the more recent history that the
proletarian worker must live from the proceeds of his labour.
That holds no truth, it is hidden through social relation means
an achieved untruth, which penetrates and damages economic
life. This can only be regulated in the economic life when the
economic life has developed independently beside the relatively
independent political-, narrower state life, which all the time
snatches from the economic life, the possibility to link human
labour back to itself. Within the legal system this is
processed in the right social understanding where human labour
retains the function it must get according to the truthful
course of life in the social organism. The economic organism
always has the tendency to use up the force of human labour.
Judicial life must always refer to the natural altruistic
position of labour and it is always, ever and again necessary,
that through new concrete democratic legalization, what the
economic life wants to accomplish in error, is to once again
tear human labour out of the fangs of economic life on the way
to public law. Just as the digestive system and the
breathing-circulatory systems must work together, and the
circulation of the blood absorb what the digestive system has
absorbed, so there must be cooperation, a mutual interaction of
what is taking place in the economic life and in the legal
life, otherwise neither the one nor the other will thrive. The
mere legal state, when it wants to become economic, paralyzes
the economic life; the economic organism, when it wants to
conquer the state, kills the system of public laws.

This is what I wanted to add to what had been said in previous
lectures towards the foundation of the Threefoldness of the
social organism. Because the bourgeois leading circles have had
their gaze hypnotized by the state, it has become something
like a god to them. Focus is not being orientated towards the
necessary differentiation of the social organism into three
members. So it has come about in our newer times that the state
has absorbed political life and in a narrower sense spiritual
life. Just like the circulation of goods depends on price and
wealth creation, like life within the political social organism
depends on the legal life, so everything which is the spiritual
life comes out of the direct content of the produce. Just think
how enormous the difference is between economic life and
spiritual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods
being brought to a goal orientated use. Anything generated out
of the spirit, be it in the sphere of education, schooling, be
it in the sphere of art, or in some or other spiritual sphere,
placing spiritual creativity in relation to its usefulness is
quite an absurdity. It can't be done. What is brought about
spiritually can't be placed on the same line as the circulation
of the economic process. This has resulted in the absorption of
the school system by the state, the university system and
whatever similar by the state, which in the modern development
is becoming a limiting factor, even in the real sense it is
becoming a limiting factor. People need to become aware once
again of making spiritual life free, unharnessed. I have
already pointed out that something else needs to be added to
the spiritual member of the social organism even though it
appears as a paradox, and that is the actual practice of
private and criminal judgement. As extraordinary as it sounds,
there are tendencies in modern life also which are not judged
in the correct way. What is increasingly taken into account in
court through misguided psychology is the tendency towards, not
an acknowledged, but need for acknowledgement of the principle
of incorporating private and criminal processes in the
spiritual member which exists relatively independently, and
relates relatively independently to all in life which develops
as the closer political life, which was developed out of pubic
rights legislation. Certainly in future it will happen in a
healthy social organism that a criminal for instance will look
for results in the second, political member. If it however is
looked for then he would be brought to trial by a judge who he
will confront in an individual human relationship.

Regarding this question perhaps only those can judge from
history, those like me, who is speaking to you now, who during
years and years of observing a region where it has become
really difficult to actually govern, and where one could still,
I may say, want to be ruled through constraint according to a
uniform state: in a region such as Austria. Here one can see
what happened if across purely language boundaries a free
jurisdiction should have been there; when despite the language
barriers of those bohemians living in a German region near
neighbouring Czech or Bohemian residents with bohemian judges
over there, the bohemian residents could turn and choose their
judges from the German region. You can see how beneficial this
principle could work which unfortunately was only in the
beginning of the aspirations in various school associations.
Here is something, I might say, like a difficult nightmare
still today, for those who have participated in Austrian life,
which presses on the soul that this egg of Columbus has not
been found: the free choice of a judge and the lively
cooperation of the plaintiffs, of the judges and of the
defendants, instead of judges presented out of the centralised
political state, who can only be authoritative, not for the
jurisdiction but for the visiting and delivering of the
criminal or then for the delivery of the judgement.

As
paradoxical it might sound today, the relationship of people to
their judge in connection with criminal and private law must be
incorporated in the independent spiritual member. Already two
days ago I made you aware how it doesn't depend on an outer
management as to the choice of persons in the spiritual branch
of the state. If you look into modern relationships then you
will see this as well, that the innermost life of science, art
and everything spiritual is above all becoming dependent on
what they should not becoming dependent on if the spiritual
member is to develop relative independence beside the other
members. It still appears like a paradox today when I say in
conclusion that each of these areas must have a certain
sovereignty, its own system of representation, its own
legislation, developed out of its relationships, developed out
of relationships of associations in economic areas, and so have
its management, its legislation as independent. In a democratic
way, there will develop out of the whole of mankind a particular
social sphere for the actual political state in which the
relationship of one person to another is regulated, as will be
the relationship to economy and the relationship to spiritual
life; without these two being interfered with by the state laws
and as a result the spiritual life's active forces will give
the layout for the management of spiritual life as well. To an
even higher degree, the spiritual life can be emancipated from
modern life, to a higher degree than it had been in olden times
when the only spiritual life, which applied to many people,
came out of religious life, out of schools and universities.

Certainly the intervention of the modern state was necessary to
rebuke the antiquated forms of religion and obsolete management
which suited them no longer. Out of modern life itself an
independent spiritual life is to be developed. This is exactly
why a spiritual scientific direction, the very foundation of
this, needs to be taken into consideration on this basis
because it is known that the entire actual productive spiritual
life also lives in, for instance, technical participation,
technically experienced ideas which can only develop with
healthy human impulses, when it is developed out of the vital,
autonomous spirit, independent from both the other members of
the social organism. The human spirit will only acquire impact
of productivity in the right way if spiritual life is
relatively autonomous. Brooding, theorizing, inventing
thoughts, for my sake as well, can also be experienced as it
takes a certain direction in more modern technology and
science, observable in their admirable methods, but the real
productive idea, which is so productive that true human
progress and at the same time real human healing is served,
these ideas can only be born within a self-supporting,
self-determining spiritual life.

As
much as people are still alienated from what I'm actually
implying which must be understood in order to place the social
question on a healthy basis, some people have responded to what
I've explained by saying: ‘Yes, this is only a more modern
meaning of the renewal of the old platonic idea of dividing the
social body into three classes: the rulers/guardians, the
fighters/auxiliaries and the producers/labourers/educational
state.’ No, this is no renewal of old platonic ideas but is in
a specific relationship as the extreme opposite, if it comes
down to it — because between the platonic thoughts
considered great in Greece and also later times, and the
thoughts of today towards a healing of the Social organism,
lies the big, critical historic incision of the fifteenth
Century. At the time of Plato, the divisions of the social
organism was one of the division of classes. The structure
which I'm talking about here was not a division of people but
was formed by members of the social organism; this social
organism was so structured that in some cases one person could
belong to all three divisions of members, it was not damaging
to move from one to the other, not even when, as in modern
parliaments it often happens, the same person is accounted for
as a farmer and at the same time belong to a party of the
state. Today it is still possible through some or other
association inaugurating an advocacy group, that an economic
protection of interest can be passed through into law. Last
time I mentioned such an example where an entire state's life
of law was penetrated by such a protection of interests. This
becomes excluded. However, my presentation of the threefold
healthy social organism, excludes people from the social
organism. People just become independent through it; they are
stripped of the character of being slaves of the organism,
where not classes of people, layers of people exist as members
but that the social organism finds its own divisions. This
points at the same time to these thoughts which form the basis
of it, which should be taken from true reality, distanced from
everything which I indicated as fanatical the day before
yesterday.

This fanaticism appears in the most varied parties. It is even
present in bourgeois circles on the side of social democracy.
This fanaticism gets a hold on people if they don't gradually
get an inkling of what the social organism as such can actually
aim for, when it is healthy. Again and again, the social
thinking suffers under the influence of the feeling, the idea,
as if the social order can be aimed for directly through some
or other program in order to bring good fortune or satisfaction
to humanity, or something of this sort. This cannot be sought
for directly. What can be aimed for directly is a social
organism capable of life, one which has vital forces of life
within itself. Situated in such an organism, living in such an
organism can out of quite different foundations bring happiness
to people. That has other foundations. However, these
foundations need to be freed from being restrained. They can
only be freed if the social organism is based on life giving
forces. Just like a really viable organism can be of help to
develop the soul, so in a comparative way can a viable social
organism develop happy, satisfied human beings who are willing
to work and have an understanding about work. This is what a
healthy social organism is all about.

An
observation of what we have experienced during a catastrophic
time, one might say, can also be considered from an
international viewpoint and corroborated out of a larger
historic viewpoint, how these ideas I have been exploring as
three members, are really necessary for the present-day form of
life for humanity and also a form of life for humanity in the
foreseeable future. One could say that before this terrible
catastrophe, called a war, which broke out over humanity, there
was a culmination of the thorough tossing and complete turmoil
of the three members which should have reached a
differentiation. Precisely due to these three members not being
able to reach relative independence beside one another, the
result has been much penetrating into what in reality must be
calculated as the point of origin and the causes of these
tragedies of war. Only a few details need to be pointed out.
The focus of humanity has been entirely directed toward the
idea that the war has its point of origin in the relation of
the Austrian state with the Balkan, namely the Serbian
relationship. Whoever was initiated into the Austrian
relationships of the last decades know how to judge the
economic connections taking place between Austria and the
south-eastern Europe, and how these were being convoluted in an
unnatural way in the relationships which were to have developed
independently with the purely political. As a result of this
amalgamation suddenly the political relationship could for
itself decide about something which was deeply rooted in
economic relations and as a result actualize a falsehood and
explode.

How
different these things could have been — I can only
indicate a few things in my lecture today, in conclusion
— if the relationships of such neighbouring states could
have been representing the Threefoldness, when across the
border the relationship could have been purely politically,
democratically based and separated from the other members, just
as the form of government is as usual. When however, the
corrected, harmonized independently economic and spiritual
factors work on the other side of the border, then the system
of the state, the so-called state, would be propagated through
interests in harmony and amalgamation, where the one is always
correcting the other, where no one single side by itself can
circumvent an explosion. Healthy relationships across borders
would develop in international relationship of nations through
Threefoldness.

And
then again, how global mankind turned their eyes on what was
happening in Germany at least outwardly, at the declaration of
war. Whoever is initiated in this area knows how the disaster
happened. Often it has been said that during July and August,
in those fatal days, politics, beside the actual warfare,
alongside the army, had failed. Politics and armies are there
where they both work, running simultaneously. They are not
divisible anyhow. They could only unfold in a healthy way, if
they worked within one of the state formed three-fold social
organisms. Otherwise politics would necessarily, at least in
one member, take on a uniformed characteristic. At a given
moment it would either culminate into the military or
non-military. What has to be uniform through its very nature,
even when it has been amalgamated through human error with
other systems, it cannot do externally so that the one goes
over to correcting the other. During these terrifying fearful
conditions which grew out of Berlin during the last days of
July and the first days of August, the process of coagulation
into one single system took place, a system which should have
been split up. They all became concentrated and responsible to
one system which no single system for the healing of mankind
had ever dared take on. Actual relationships would then clearly
teach us if these things are investigated without prejudice and
bias. Oh, how much nonsense is being said in relation to
politics and the army! So much nonsense has been uttered in the
last four and a half years! I only want to say one thing: if
within an inseparable member of the social organism the dormant
policies and strategy could only work, then never, when the
strategy is led to depend on itself, will the policies
influence this strategy in a healthy way. There has been a
tendency to time and again refer to the clause of (Major
General Carl von) Clausewitz (1780-1831): "War is a mere
continuation of politics by other means,"
(Die Kriegführung sei die Fortsetzung
der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).

I
don't want to offer criticism about this statement in as far as
it relates to the entire war analysis. However, just like men
have, again and again — and women have done so as well
— referred to this saying, it has just about as much
sense as if one would say: “Divorce is the continuation of
marriage through other means.”

This kind of nonsense springs from unnatural thinking, which
multiply and penetrate in an unnatural way into real
relationships. When things are for once considered without
prejudice then it will be apparent how differently things could
have gone. Understandably what has happened is historically
necessary and what must be said should be a valid impulse for
the future, but hypothetically one could still say that
everything could have happened differently if the structure of
the international European relationships could have been under
the influence of the social Threefoldness. One could then say:
what has happened came through the relations of alliance.
However, alliance relationships could never have entered under
the influence of a Threefoldness. Such alliance training which
these were and which led to the catastrophes of the last four
and a half years, would be ended if people orientated
themselves in the sense of the Threefoldness of a healthy
social organism.

What I am opening up here has been thoroughly thought through
with real meaning, it is brought out of thoughts from reality.
I have also always said that if I had involved myself during
these fearful years, an authoritative position corresponding to
that time would have been to point out the Threefoldness: The
only reality is that things change from one day to the next and
understandably relationships could have changed regarding these
things which need to be talked about. I say to people: ‘What is
presented here is no program, it is not an ideal; it
corresponds to observations which want to be realized in
Central and Eastern Europe, above all in Europe. You have the
choice to either apply good sense today or to go and encounter
revolutions and cataclysms.’

They have started already and will show themselves in other
ways. Today however I might repeat a consideration which can be
said on this occasion. I have always said: ‘Whoever is a
Utopian, a theorist, who does not think from the basis of
reality, but out of abstract claims or party impulses, is
interested in what a program or something similar can offer,
and that this is actually executed according to specific
details.’ These things do not matter in what I am presenting
— I have mentioned this before. It could be said —
and still is said today — that the formulation of what I
am representing will leave no single stone standing on another.
The important thing is not that some or other conjecture is
realised but that reality is tackled at some point. If this is
done it will be discovered that through tackling it, the way
forward will become clear. It could become clear by carrying it
out and then all formulations need to be adjusted. This is not
important if one is no Utopian, no fanatic, to execute
something word for word, but to start it at a certain point. At
such a point as to where it must start I want to point out
still today, before it becomes too late, before human instincts
are so far unleashed that an understanding among people,
perhaps decades from now, would not be possible any more.

In
closing today, I still want to mention something —
although in a narrower sense it doesn't belong to this lecture
— I also think that if anyone feels within his soul that
he is somehow connected to the social question, he has the task
to not only speak up about it but need to apply all means to
allow his understanding to be brought to his contemporaries.
This is what we can do first: promoting mutual social
understanding. Much has been corrupted, spoiled in the most
varied areas throughout the world due to fragmented, mashed
thinking, as I have characterised, resulting in disabling the
right idea to come forward at the right time. As a result, I
must greet the possibility with a certain satisfaction that out
of the difficult relationships of the present it has become
possible to accomplish practical results of ideas suggested
here, in a relatively short time. Those individualities who
have in a certain way, I could call it, been ignited regarding
the social question with a view based on reality, have allowed
themselves to work towards an understanding of these things, at
least in these areas where today misfortune can be the biggest
teacher. Anyway, I might regard it as particularly lucky that
here within the Swiss region, where there is still relatively
speaking the opportunity for peaceful objectivity, that
precisely due to this possibility of peaceful objectivity a
deeper understanding can enter as well and point out the
necessity for the mutual social understanding of humanity
indicated in these four lectures, and calling for action. After
all, within the pain and suffering which come along during the
course of events and in destiny which various members of
humanity can experience these days, it can give a certain
satisfaction that misfortune actually has taught some people a
thing or two. So it could happen — if you allow me to
bring this, as it is always meaningful not to remain abstract
but be actual when relating to the social question — I
have incorporated an appeal in my detailed presentation here in
short sentences, a call which is actually dedicated towards
processes in the whole world but which has found entry into the
hearts of those who have been severely tested in Germany and
German-Austria by tragedy and educated by tragedy. I have in
this appeal tried to present how the founding of the German
Reich took place at a time when the developmental possibilities
of a newer humanity in such a reestablishment wanted to, in the
most imminent sense, enter into the new social task.

Small things were presented in a comprehensive way; yet just
what this empire should have done, to place corresponding
content into its frames from the developmental forces of modern
humanity and steer towards this Threefoldness, this they could
not see. The result has been that the rest of the world turned
towards Central Europe. How could the rest of the world
understand the entitlement of this particular empire's
establishment if this establishment did not create what
undoubtedly pointed out its right within the international
process of humanity?

Therefore I have believed that a right program, if I may call
it that — but you know from the foregoing: this is no
program but the reality — therefore I have believed that
formulation may be done in the appeal to humanity for a task
which could arise from the Europeans who are confronted with
the necessity for renewal. After all one can be satisfied that
up to yesterday afternoon this appeal had already been
supported by more signatures in Germany than the one-time
appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals with unhappy memories,
that over a hundred signatures for this appeal in Germany and
up to yesterday over seventy signatures out of German-Austria
has been made available for this appeal. I mention this because
I want to speak from the basis of reality and as a result draw
attention to what I believe is needed in the further process of
social development, by it not standing alone when it comes down
to making it valid for the mutual relationships of one person
to another.

So
we must first work on the way to a real social solution. This
is the next step. Today humanity stands for once in relation to
a large part of the civilized world confronting the necessity
to look the social problem in the eye. To do so would mean
solving a problem — let me say this to you in conclusion
— that it is uncomfortable in the highest levels of
thinking. Many people will still admit that for a
transformation of the institutions, a transformation of the
social structure is necessary. Didn't the entire spirit of the
lectures, which I allow myself to present, hasn't the whole
spirit been one of pointing out that something else is
necessary? If Proletarian Marxist educated leaders repeatedly
stress that the words of Marxism are the truth: The philosophers
interpreted the world and declared: ‘It comes down to thoughts
not only explaining the world but transforming it.’ Thus, it
happens in today's critical demands of time that not only a
half measure but perhaps not even a quarter is done. What is
necessary is that thoughts are not only directed to some or
other transformation of institutions, or social structures but
that it is necessary for thoughts themselves to change. Only
out of reformed thoughts will a healthy social organism be able
to develop. Institutions hardly please people; to re-think is
even less pleasing — but necessary. Unless a person
accepts this, it will not be possible to orientate him- or
herself, and then they can't cooperate towards the healing of
the social organism.

For
a long time, the most important considerations and decisions
have knocked at the door of the social question. Now it has
entered into the house of humanity. It can't be thrown out
again because in a certain sense humanity's evolution comes up
against an enchantress. It not only works on humanity's outer
structure but makes humanity face the need to either re-think
or to add tragedy to the already present tragedies, which
multiply.

With this, necessities become clear, what needs to be realised
if it will not be too late in the relationship that instincts,
as I've mentioned, takes on form in order that the
understanding between the various classes would no longer be
possible. Only then do we approach a healing of the social
organism when renewal, what we are waiting for, when health,
for which we hope, are not based on old thinking, but that when
we make the bold and powerful decision towards the progress of
mankind by orientating our forces towards new thinking; because
only out of new thoughts will the possibility of life blossom
for new generations. This is how you must think the social
question has come about, that it has grown out of the
conditions of modern life. It will be false to think one can
believe in somehow finding a current solution. Socialism isn't
a solution or an attempt at a solution, no, modern life and the
life of mankind into the future has brought about the social
question. It will always be there. In a living, social organism
solutions will always be needed. In this a part, a piece of the
life of future humanity will have to exist, that in each
generation these questions need to be solved out of new forms;
this social question which, once it has come up, admonishes and
upsets the entire structure of human thoughts and feelings. If
we turn to it with our whole heart, with our entire soul, then
it will turn to us, not however for our salvation but for our
harm.